Terry Mosher: Sports Heroes Not Always Special Off the Field

I'm all a-Twitter on Facebook. But don't ask me what I'm doing. All I know for sure is that somebody named Alayne is following me. I hope she knows I'm blind to what I'm doing.

Twitter and Facebook remind me once again just how fast electronically we are moving. Now you are able to instantly communicate with professional athletes on Twitter. I want to warn Alayne: Don't expect the sports hero you could be following to be anything special. Just because he might be able to jump high enough to peer down at the basketball hoop or pass for 300-plus yards almost every NFL game he plays, doesn't necessarily make him an all-American person.

In all the years I covered the Seattle Mariners, there weren't many special humans playing baseball for the local nine. Most were average Joes with a special talent to throw, run and hit a white ball. A few were jerks of a special nature. And just a handful were guys who were special both on and off the baseball field.

Most of the players changed for the worse when they got their first big salary. Some surprised me how fast they changed. Only a few were unaffected by newfound riches.

If you have a chance to follow somebody on Twitter or greet in Facebook, you could not go wrong if it were Alvin Davis, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner or the Crafty Lefty, Bill Krueger.

Just don't follow Alex Rodriquez. I discovered very early what a phony he was the night he came up to the press box at the Kingdome and complained to me (I was the official scorer at the time) about an error that wasn't an error in a 15-2 Mariners' loss to Toronto. It wasn't one of A-Rod's better moments, but as we all have discovered since he's had many more even worse. Now there is a new book out by Selena Roberts – "A-Rod: The Many lives of Alex Rodriguez" — that sheds even more light on the current Yankee.

OC Feedback

I expected before I wrote last week's column on the state of athletics at Olympic College that the silence would be deafening. Athletic director Barry Janusch called and was upset (that is saying it mildly) and a person I won't identify because he has a bias against OC, sent me an e-mail agreeing with me.

I got three other e-mails, one from Fredi Perry, and another from her daughter Andi. Both thanked me for mentioning Linc Perry. Linc, a downtown businessman, lived OC sports. He headed a booster club that raised funds for the program.

Green River/BlueJackets coach Matt Acker e-mailed and agreed OC baseball coach Ryan Parker is doing all the right things. He also said in his eight years at Green River, he has yet to meet the Green River president (Parker said the same thing about OC). Acker added that he saw the president walking across campus once, went to introduce himself and the president thought he was a student.

That's it for response to the column. Otherwise, silence prevailed. Which confirms the community could care less. Which is sad, because I would like to see an OC that is an athletic leader in the NWAACC in all sports. But to get there the culture has to change, and money has to be spent to seriously upgrade facilities.

THIS 'N THAT

The rumor is that the Dallas Mavericks' Jason Terry, the NBA's best sixth-man this year, has a stake in some of the condos that have been built on the Bremerton waterfront. I hope he's not worried about getting his investment back anytime soon, not with the economy the way it is. Dan Butler ran a North Kitsap school record 49.9 handheld time in the 440-yard run in 1980 and that record held until 2003 when Kolby Hoover ran an electronically-timed 49.64 400 meters. Butler was upset because his 440 converts to 49.61 in 400 meters, which is faster than Hoover's time. But when his time is then converted from handheld to the electronic time (FAT) used in today's races, it's a 49.84. These conversions are confusing, so it's understandable Butler is upset. But races today are electronically timed and are more precise. To be fair, maybe schools should make note of old yardage and handheld records, although that would create a lot of extra work for coaches who are already overworked and underpaid. I don't much like the NBA anymore. Players have outgrown the rules, the 10-foot hoops. And those tattoos have to go. Why would you paint over a beautiful picture nature provided? When are they going to present Seahawks rookie Aaron Curry with a Superman cape? If he's as good on and off the field as I've heard over and over on sports talk radio, then when his playing days are over, he can run for President. It's nice, however, that he's a good guy. We need more of them. Too many of them have died, including a lot of my friends. The good die young, and guys like me are left behind to ponder why?

Terry Mosher is a former Sun sportswriter who is publisher and editor of the monthly Sports Paper. E-mail him at bigmosher@msn.com.